#184 I appear to be trapped in my shirt

Oddly enough this shows off the shirt better than most of my other "proper" photos. I should really just take photos of the shirts or don a mask for these things. Goodness.

I'm going to try my best to recall all that I wrote the first time I attempted to write this post. Originally there was a very lengthy and heartfelt post about my various big memories about the band Saves the Day, but we'll see if I have the patience to attempt to recreate what was no-doubt a literary masterpiece.

I still remember the first time I heard one of their songs. I was getting a ride home from my high school section leader when the opening notes to "At Your Funeral" started ringing through the radio. As soon as it hit the first verse I started bugging him about if he knew who the song was by and what the title was, making sure to note it in the little reporters notebook I used to keep in my pocket at all times. Probably within the week I made a trek out to Tower Records to pick up their album.

It was unlike anything I'd really heard at the time. Not really groundbreaking, but certainly different than the sort of popular rock bands that flooded the airwaves. This was a time in which I was still mainly using the radio to inform my music listening habits (which kind of blows my mind to think of). I want to say that buying that Saves the Day album marked a turning point in my musical education. After that I really started to turn more to the internet and music sites like AbsolutePunk.net (yeah I thought I was a cool little punk rock kid with my Hot Topic bracelets and random pins on my black backpack. yeesh) to get recommendations about which bands to check out and what shows to see.

Saves the Day was the first concert I ever went to see and I've even got the shirt to prove it. I remember I wasn't familiar with the other albums that they had released before their most recent one so I was left kind of mumbling along or swaying absentmindedly when they played those songs.

This shirt is from one of the other handful of times that I went to see them, and this was from one of my more memorable concert experiences. It was held at the teen center at my town and they got a few songs in before I started to notice that it smelled a lot like gas...

...they ended up stopping in the middle of their set because they had to evacuate the building due to the quite obvious gas leak. The lead singer was kind enough to set up for an impromptu acoustic set in the park adjacent to the concert venue. Then afterward he hung around and singed autographs and took photos with people. I actually had him record my outgoing message, which was probably just confusing for people trying to reach me and only cool to maybe one or two of my friends.

I listened to their "Stay What You Are" to get me in the right mindset as I was composing this post. I've got to say it still holds up fairly well. I'm still a big fan of their bass grooves and there's some good guitar work in there too. Further listening: Tracks 1, 4, 8, and 10

#157 This Can't End Well

It's hard to believe that I own yet another pirate themed mashup shirt, but here we are. This time we see a ninja and pirate going at it. Presumably they are the each the champion of their respective rival faction and are there to settle the score once and for all. According to Deadliest Warrior (a show for people who love blood spatter and bragging about their dicks), pirates win. The logic behind it seems to come down to, a pirate is just going to shoot a ninja in the fucking face, the end.

I remember I walked into a writing class once with this shirt on and the TA said something like "Do you just own n0thing but ridiculous awesome shirts?" My response was "pretty much, yeah."

#130 Sweetbitter

Is it weird that my room is just littered with props for me to use while taking all of these photos? Perhaps it's merely whimsical (which is to say, weird but in an endearing kind of way). It's a wonder I don't have a girlfriend, right? What girl doesn't love immature dorks that own way too many toys?

Okay that actually makes it sound a little bit endearing.

ANYWHO. I got this shirt and a matching goldenrod one for the friend that introduced me to the band Modest Mouse. Good News for People Who Love Bad News had just come out (featuring the single "Float On") but mainly we listened to Lonesome Crowded West (which, without double checking on wikipedia, is the album I believe this design was created for).

Modest Mouse is kind of a hard band to pin down, I'd say. Their music is generally mellow, melancholy, with occasional bouts of anger. They also have a few more catchy uptempo (but never upbeat) tunes (Paper Thin Walls, Float On, Dashboard).

When I think of their music it usually feels like something that you'd listen to on a roadtrip through the midwest at night. The person sitting shotgun next to you lies asleep, smudging their cheek against the window as the radio confesses everything you wouldn't be able to say in the wheat-colored daylight.

#121 Awah Awah Awah...

Today's shirt is in honor of my good friend Tanya's birthday. I almost typed goof friend Tanya, but changed it back to good, though goof is probably fitting considering the times I've seen Tanya running on very, very, very little sleep. In any case, the reason this shirt reminds me of Tanya is not because she's a pimp, but because it contains an altered likeness of the character Pac Man. Tanya loves her some Pac Man. The most apparent expression of this love is her super ultra awesome car which is decked out with Pac Man decals. It's certainly hard to miss.

Fun story: Brandon and I once became very concerned that someone had stolen Tanya's car because the person we spotted behind the wheel had short blonde-ish hair. We were like "What are the odds that someone else has a white car decorated in the exact same way and would also be in the Irvine area?" Turns out, it actually was Tanya, she just had decided to wear a wig that day for funsies (and now I see how goof maybe was some sort of Freudian typing).

Anywho this shirt is one that I got from comic-con one year. It's actually a reproduction of one that Ben Affleck's music producer character wears in Jersey Girl, a movie that no one saw for very good reason. You can find it here.

#111 Don't worry. She likes your butt and fancy hair. I know. I read her diary.

I got this kind of randomly as a gift from one of my old roommates. I'm not even sure it was for a specific occasion. I did quite enjoy the movie Lilo and Stitch. It's probably my third favorite kid befriends a creature from outer space movie (behind E.T. and the Iron Giant).

Happy Little Blog

If you can't tell, today's shirt features artist Bob Ross host of PBS's The Joy of Painting. If you've never seen the show I highly suggest it if you feel the need to take a nap in the afternoon. He's just the most mellow, calm person ever to have been allowed to appear on public television. As Patton Oswalt so put it, the guy's like a "walking quaalude". His narration as he was painting was just so soothing and calming. Everything he painted was a "happy little this" or "happy little that" and he would kind of come up with little stories as to why everything was there. He was just the biggest hippie with the biggest afro* and it was amazing.

I used to be pretty addicted to the show. There was something so compelling about watching him take a blank canvas and all of a sudden turn it into this really impressive work of art and then immediately fuck it up by adding a gigantic fucking tree in the foreground. I've seen quite a few episodes and there are very few ones that end without him adding a giant brown pine tree on the side of the painting which ends up covering about a fifth of the work he's already done. Like of the maybe two episodes that I haven't seen him paint a big tree like that, one was because all he painted that day was a giant bunny on a blank background.

*Tangent time: There's a little red line below the word afro in my post. Apparently it's a proper noun as my computer wants me to correct it to Afro. After looking at the wiki it's probably because it's short for Afro-American. Wait. My computer didn't correct the word wiki, but afro is improper? What is this madness?

Another Stroll Down Memory Lane

Here's another shirt in honor of UCI's welcome week. This is the shirt that our dorm had printed up my freshman year. I lived in Crickhollow which was in the Middle Earth housing area. I pretty much only decided to live in Middle Earth because it just sounded like it would be an interesting anecdote to tell in the future. I haven't really gotten much mileage out of that one though and I ended up living pretty far from most of my classes so maybe that wasn't the best decision in retrospect. I'll pretty much do anything if I think it'll make a good story later though.

Anywho living in the dorms was interesting to say the least. We never saw our RA and she ended up leaving school before Spring Quarter. One of the other housing people that lived in our dorm filled the traditional RA role and we actually ended up doing a lot of fun activities with her (e.g. iceblocking, snowboarding, volleyball). She remains one of the most amazingly positive people that I've ever met. As bitchy as I am, I've got to respect that. Several people ended up leaving the dorm (e.g. quitting school, kicked out for streaking across the entire campus, baby). And I made a few friends that I quickly lost contact with after that first year was over. So it goes.

By Lancers Do They Mean Knights?

Here's another thrift store football shirt. It's weird that I would have two of these. Anywho this shirt is for the La Serna Lancers Coach of the Week. I never really thought about this but is a Lancer one who uses a lance? Wouldn't that just be a knight? Or if it's one who supplies a knight with lances that would be a squire. Or a maker of lancers would probably just be a blacksmith. I mean, wikipedia has a real answer, but whatevs. I can't really be too confused since all of my school mascots have been pretty weird (a poet, a viking, an exploded space shuttle, a marauder, and an anteater).

Yak!

This is a shirt that I got a while back from Noisebot.com. They used to have this grab bag deal where you told them your size and the amount of shirts you wanted and it would be 2 bucks. They still have the deal now I guess. It's just jumped up to being 6 dollars a shirt now. http://www.noisebot.com/grab_bag_t-shirt.htm This is mainly to get rid of their overstocked and discontinued shirts. Hence them not actually carrying the yak shirt anymore. There's also a high likelihood that I might have gotten it as a grab bag from The Cotton Factory.com because they also have a grab bag and it's been so long that I can't remember which site it was (their random tees are 7 bucks).

Tell All Your Friends

This is another fairly old shirt in the collection. Frankly, I kind of wore it today to get it out of the way. I've had it for a while but I rarely wear it. I got it at a concert my freshman year of college with a friend that became not my friend by the end of the year. She got the same shirt in the same color and everything. Ironically I think I got the same one in an effort to I dunno, feel closer to her or something like that. This blog just took a turn for the depressing. Sorry, dudes.

Coincidentally enough I think the theme of the shirt is all about how ladies are going to hurt you since it features the phrase "You're in for a world of hurt" underneath a depiction of a man proposing. Bitches, man.

Taking Back Sunday's "Tell All Your Friends" album is definitely one of my favorite albums from that musical period of my life. It's still one of the best produced albums that I've ever heard. It's a fantastic album about being angry and moody and pissed at your best friend. Fun Facts: This album is the companion album to Brand New's "Your Favorite Weapon" and there are several sections of lyrics lifted directly from each other. The falling out described in each album occurred after one singer made out with the other's girlfriend at a party. It's like an emo version of a rap battle I guess. I'd say that this would be another weird parallel to my relationship with the girl I bought this shirt with but really every emo album is about that sort of bullshit.

If yesterday's shirt represented the music I used to listen to in early high school/middle school, today's shirt represents the music I listened to in late high school/early college. The music of yesterday's shirt was all pop punk and today's shirt is all emo music and its various hardcore/folk-acoustic/pop/etc. forms. I'll have to find my best indie hipster d-bag band shirt tomorrow I guess to represent the Allison of today.

No handy link to find it today, folks. More than likely it was a concert exclusive. Even if it wasn't, lots of bands cycle through new designs pretty quickly. However, Taking Back Sunday's official shop can be found at this site. I'm quite a big fan of the monster under the bed shirt and the "I used to be in Taking Back Sunday" shirt.